Sep 14, 2013

Run This Town

Oprah Winfrey once said, "The key to realizing a dream is to focus on success but on significance- and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will have greater meaning."

What in the world ever made you think that your small steps, the little things you do, are not significant?

People always ask me what I do for a living. Knowing I have graduated with high marks and honors, most expect me to be in finance, or medicine or law... because apparently, those are the only acceptable fields for Summa Cum Laude graduates. You cannot imagine the guffaws and bewilderment I receive when I answer point blank that I am into fashion. The most common question is why? or the more condescending, "are you serious? what happened? You are too smart to be in fashion." I smirk and brush the question aside as I do not want to engage in a debate on how fashion is important and all that, and while I do take offense in the statement because according to people "fashion is not exactly rocket science," I have to say, that I will not allow myself to be deemed irrelevant or superficial, just because I am in a particular field. To be quite frank, whether you are in medicine, politics or the entertainment industry should not be the issue... it is how you being in that field affects people and helps transform lives that matters. Sure, I may not have the life of a person in my hands (like a cardio-thoracic surgeon does during surgery), and I am quite sure nobody would die if I picked the wrong fabric for a design... but that doesn't make me or what I do insignificant. I have done my best with the limitations and the cards that life has dealt me. Sure, given my circumstances, it would much easy to just shrivel up and die but I kept on fighting and I persevered to make something out of my life amidst the physical limitations present. I did not allow myself to wallow in self pity and be miserable... I have managed to put up my own business, employ people, make a name for myself and my brand and more so, help educate people through the foundation I am head of, and these I have to say are great achievements for me. To be honest, I actually take more pride in being who I am and doing what I do than having graduated with merits because while it was my duty to study when I was in college (and maybe I just took it to a whole new level and studied a lot), it was never my obligation to get over myself, my circumstances and do something. If I wanted to have it easy, I would've simply lived off my days concentrating on my sicknesses. I didn't choose to do that because well, to be honest, I've never actually been a fan of having it easy and more importantly, I have come to realize that doing something is much more meaningful than doing nothing at all. Contributing, even in the simplest way, goes a long way. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he states self actualization as the most important and highest achievement a human being can attain. My professor, on the other hand, being quite the optimist, stated that this needed to be revised as another higher need exists: that of transcendence. I have lived off this thought which is why I tend to go beyond the level of human consciousness and experience things as being one with a greater whole. It makes me responsible for things apart from myself, and if you see life that way, you would put value in every little thing you do.

When I am told to take one step at a time, I always let out an inner giggle. Have you ever tried taking steps two at a time. Doesn't work. True, being placed on such a public spot makes all my actions are subject to scrutiny and major whiplash, but even facing and defending myself is significant, as it teaches people not to take crap from everyone else.

We have to content ourselves in the knowledge that everything we do is significant. For many years, it has been well documented that every little movement affects everything in the greater scheme of things. And so it is in life- nothing, but nothing- we do is insignificant. Everything we do affects someone else and has much much more meaning than we realize at that moment. We live in an interconnected universe. We may not like to recognize the responsibility of knowing that everything we do has significance. And it does. No matter how much we try to deny it. You are significant and what you do is significant. So make everything, even the little things, matter.

I wore this outfit to the inauguration of our Luzon scholars at the Tower Club. It was a great and meaningful event.

How does Joanna Ladrido fight for what she believes in?

Petrol PH: Joanna Ladrido is #FuelledToExist

About Me

I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger than reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. NO MORE WALLS.